If you have knowledge on a subject matter, you might have considered creating a course so you can share this knowledge with many others. Have you thought of Thinkific vs Teachable?
Let me explain.
With the right strategy and platform in place, you can make creating courses your full-time job and earn a comfortable income from it.
Nowadays,
Thinkfic and Teachable are two of the most popular course building platforms out there.
They are both all-in-one platforms with multiple capabilities, and you might be wondering which one is best suited for selling your online course.
Let us dive into the different features available on both platforms so you can make an informed decision as to where to sell your online course.
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Thinkfic vs Teachable Pricing
| Thinkific | Teachable | |
| Pricing | Free plan not available. The paid option is charged between $39- $499 per month. Free trial for not more than 10 students. | Free plan available. You can scale up to $499 per month to enjoy additional features. There are Plus plans for high-volume users. |
| Transaction Fees | Charged up to 10 percent plus $1 | No transaction fees |
| Instant Access to your Funds | The way you access your funds depends on the payment gateway you choose. Your students don’t pay you directly, but Teachable. Teachable can hold your funds for up to two months on Teachable Payments. For PayPal gateway, the funds can be held for up to one month. | Payments will go directly to your PayPal or Stripe account immediately. Meaning there is no holding of funds with Thinkific. Your students will pay you directly. |
Both Thinkfic and Teachable have multiple pricing plans that include different features:
Free Plan
Both platforms have a free package.
For Thinkfic, you do not pay anything at all and you get the ability to create up to 3 courses, unlimited students, unlimited quizzes and surveys.
However,
The free package from Teachable includes a $1 + 10% transaction fee for the money your students pay and caps the number of students to 10.
Basic Plan
For this plan,
You pay $49 for Thinkfic’s basic plan and in addition to all the features in the Free Plan, you get manual student enrollment, the ability to create coupons for your students, email integration, and affiliate reporting.
On the other hand,
Teachable’s Basic Plan costs $29 and includes a 5% transaction fee. You can have two admins for your course, create custom domains and coupon codes.
You also get trained on how to create and improve your course and you can integrate third-party involvement like affiliate marketing and email marketing.
Pro Plan
Thinkfic’s Pro Plan will cost you $99 per month. In addition to features from the previous plans, you get the ability to have two admins for your site and five-course admins.
You can have private courses for a select group of students and apply advance pricing.
For an extra $0.1 per active student over 100 students, you can get the Growth Package in addition to your Pro Plan.
This gives you access to webhooks, bulk emailing and Thinkfic’s brand is removed from your courses.
Teachable’s Professional Plan costs $79 and it has no transaction fees.
You can have 5 admins, advanced customization and the ability to grade your students’ quizzes and issue course completion certificates.
Premier/Business Plan
Thinkfic’s Premier Plan is the highest plan and costs a monthly $499. You can have five site admins and up to 50-course admins under this plan.
You also have access to all the growth packages from Thinkfic. The most exclusive package on Teachable is the Business Plan.
You pay $499 per month and no transaction fees. You can have up to 100 site admins, bulk student enrollment and manual student importin as well as custom user roles.
Thinkific Vs Teachable: Web Design
Both Thinkfic and Teachable give you free web hosting and an SSL certificate when you subscribe.
You also get access to CSS and HTML files, which means you can adjust the code to your website to suit the design you want.
You can get a custom domain and even change the language of your site to any language. The teams for both platforms take care of security, backup and updates.
Teachable gives you a basic template to start with. You can then customize it to your taste by adding logos, images and graphics.
It allows you to drag and drop media from the internet or from your computer.
You can also modify the code for the default theme. However, you cannot import any custom themes.
Thinkfic goes the extra mile by giving you multiple themes packed with multiple styles.
Thinkfic keeps adding extra templates so you can have a wide pool to pick from.
You can match the theme with the type, of course, you are putting on the platform e.g. business, health & fitness, technology. You can also modify the code for the theme and import custom themes onto the platform.
Thinkific Vs Teachable: Course Building
Both Thinkfic and Teachable give you multiple options to build your course. You can add a video, audio as well as text and quizzes to your courses.
Teachable also allows you to add all these features to each of your lectures in any order.
Therefore,
If you are handling multiple courses, Teachable allows you to select multiple lessons from the curriculum page and establish the settings for publishing, downloading and any other viewing options.
You can also import your course content from cloud applications like Dropbox and Google Drive onto your Teachable site in bulk.
This makes it easier and faster to upload content compared to from your computer.
In addition to giving you the option to add different kinds of media to your course,
Thinkfic allows you to add Captivate and Storyline media to your course. You can upload content in bulk to each course.
If you want to modify the settings, you need to go into individual lessons. This can be inconvenient if you are managing multiple courses.
Thinkfic also does not let you add multiple types of content to the same lecture e.g. video, text, quizzes and pdf transcripts.
While you can upload multiple videos and reuse them for different courses, Thinkfic does not allow you to import directly from Cloud applications.
This can be inconvenient and slow.
Site Administration and Teaching
Both Teachable and Thinkific will allow you to create, sell, and manage courses. They are designed such that you can own and export data, provide detailed progress tracking, and email customers. You can as well report, carry out analytics, enroll as many students as you wish, and even deliver certificates to them upon completion of their courses.
The difference between the two platforms boils down to the administration of the sites. Here’s how.
| Teachable | Thinkific | |
| Group Sales and Reporting | Lacks this feature | You can organize your customers into groups, sell, organize, and track sales. Offers custom reporting and time-based cohorts. You can as well sell to organizations. |
| Fully-Fledged User Administration | By default, users on the Teachable platform belong to Teachable. The login requires users to agree to the platform’s privacy policy and terms of service. You won’t be able to update students’ details such as passwords, emails, or names. | Users on this platform belong to you. You can update student details as you require. Students are also able to update their details. |
| Payment Tracking | For two percent of course sales, the platform will pay your affiliates and authors for you (BackOffice Fee). The site will also collect and remit your tax forms. This platform doesn’t pay your business partners unless they are authors. | Thinkific gives you complete control of your business. It will track both payments made and those owing. It has a payee feature that can help you track the payments made to your authors and business partners. |
| User levels and permissions | AdvancedOn the $499 plan, you can specify user levels and permissions. | BasicOffer payee, affiliates, course administrators, and owners user types. |
| Custom Fields for Signup | Lacks this feature | The platform will require students to provide more data before signing up |
| Bookmark Presets | Lacks this feature | Specific criteria are used to segment students allowing you to see and contact them easily. You can reach out to students falling behind or those who dropped their purchase mid-way. You can also create unique bookmarks. |
Thinkific Vs Teachable: Security and Support
Both Teachable and Thinkific offer comprehensive SSL certificates, secure hosting (cloud), private Facebook community, and knowledge base. On matters of customer support, Thinkfic is a little more aggressive than Teachable. Here’s the comparison.
| Teachable | Thinkific | |
| On-Demand Training | You pay $99/month to avail Teachable training program | Thinkific training courses are available at no charge to all customers. |
| Support Channels | Email support, chat support on some plans. Free customers enjoy limited support. | Email and phone support to all customers. |
| Additional Support? | No additional support | Migration support, 1v1 onboarding, account managers, and calls for launch preparedness, depending on the plan level. |
| Support Hours | Five days a week (Monday-Friday ) | Seven days a week (Monday-Sunday) |
Advanced Developer Features and Site Administration
Thinkific put a lot of emphasis on enterprise-grade features and customization. The platform is user-friendly and can be used even by those who are not tech-savvy. For customers with a tech background, Thinkific provides features that allow extensibility for future growth. Many developers love Thinkific so much.
Teachable lacks offline editing tools, themes, SSO, or API access. This means it can’t be extended. Meaning, as your business expands, you’ll definitely outgrow Teachable.
| Teachable | Thinkific | |
| Developers only API | Lacks this feature | Thinkific has a full-featured API, which developers can use to manage and access your site programmatically |
| Developers only SSO | Lacks this feature | Using JWT (Web tokens), students can sign-on your system with JSON |
| Export and Import Themes | Lacks this feature | Agencies and developers can export, import, modify, or create complete themes. |
| CSS/HTML/Liquid | It only Offers basic HTML/CSS access. You can’t upload assets or create new files. | You get full access to theme code with the ability to add layouts, sections, pages, snippets, styles & custom assets. |
| Editing Environment | Lacks this featureLacks sandbox environment. Allows only live edits of website code. The edits made on codes must be published before they can be previewed. | Themes and code can be fully designed, reviewed, and tested privately. Only publish changes to your live website when you’re ready. |
Thinkific Vs Teachable: Student Interactions
Both platforms give you the ability to interact with your students.
Thinkfic has a ‘Community’ feature that you can attach to a course and your students can start and follow any conversation in the community.
In addition to this,
Thinkfic also has a native commenting system. However, you cannot embed a discussion to an individual lecture.
Teachable also has a native commenting system where students can ask questions and you can respond.
The commenting system can be embedded to individual lectures; this is more specific than Thinkfic’s system.
When it comes to quizzes, Thinkfic has more advanced options.
You can import questions from other sources with an option to add image and video options to your questions and answers.
Thinkfic has a native exam solution integration called Brillium.
It does not require extra coding. You can add Assignments to your lessons and grade submissions from your students.
You can also gather feedback from your students by creating surveys on the platform.
Teachable’s quizzing options are a bit limited. You can only have plain text for your quizzes.
For exams, you can integrate an external exam solution but you have to do a bit of coding for proper integration.
Teachable does not have an Assignment feature and you cannot create native surveys on the platform.
Teachable allows creative of native certificates on the platform and you are given templates for certification.
It is sent automatically to a student once they complete a course. Thinkfic allows you certification if you are on the Pro Plan and above.
You have to use Accredible for the certification, which gives you more templates and features for your certificate.
Thinkific Vs Teachable: Sales And Marketing Features
Both Thinkfic and Teachable give you the freedom to create several pricing plans, including a one-time payment plan, a subscription plan and you can market your courses as a bundle and sell them together.
Thinkfic allows you to create multiple pricing plans and a subscription plan only on the Pro Plan.
You can only use one currency for all your courses.
However, you can offer a free trial period for your students and charge them a setup free for interested members.
You can also set an expiry date for courses depending on the pricing plan on Thinkfic.
When it comes to payment, Thinkfic allows you instant payouts, with payment from students going directly to your PayPal or Stripe account.
You can then distribute payment to your authors and affiliates.
Teachable allows you to create multiple pricing options on all their plans, including the free plan.
You also get the option of using different currencies for your courses. When it comes to processing payouts, Teachable gives you the option of using a custom payment gateway where you can any payments by students go directly to your Stripe or PayPal account.
However, you can only access the custom payment gateway when you are on the Professional or Business Plan.
Using Teachable’s payment gateway uses Teachable’s account to process payments and pays it instantly to your account if you are in North America.
If you are outside North America, Teachable pays your affiliates and instructors for you first and the payment reaches you in 30-60 days.
Final Verdict Of Thinkific Vs Teachable
Both Thinkfic and Teachable have their pros and cons. Teachable has more affordable pricing plans but the transaction fees and cap on the number of students you can have on lower price plans can be a deterrent.
It is, however, easier to build your course on Teachable, interact with students and process payments.
Thinkfic is a bit more pricey but you get multiple themes and templates, instant payout regardless of where you are and which payment plan you are on, and better student interactions.
Experts suggest that you use the simplicity and low cost of Teachable to launch your course if you want to create and manage your course alone.
If you are running a business and want to zone in on a specific audience, then Thinkfic’s advanced features will be better for you.
Before making a permanent decision, try out the free plans available on both platforms.
This way you can interact with the features on each platform to see which one is best suited for selling your online course.
Is Thinkific better than teachable?
I would say, thinkific is better than teachable due to the strong security features.
Is Thinkific free?
Thinkific offers a free plan with the lowest premium being $49 per month.
Is teachable a good platform?
Yes, Teachable is a great platform especially for content creating and marketing
Is Thinkific mobile friendly?
Yes, Thinkific is mobile friendly and therefore, it is easy for students to use it using their phones.